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“Erich believes—he’s from Bavarian Roman Catholic stock; they tend to be devout and nonquestioning—that Stalin, Communism, embodies the Antichrist, and that Hitler and the Nazis are fighting on the side of God.

“He is not a fool. Foolish, sometimes, but not a fool. He fully understands that Juan Domingo Perón’s fascination with Fascism and National Socialism is based not so much on religious conviction but on what’s good for Juan Domingo Perón.

“Erich is offended by Perón’s morality, as manifested in his sexual tastes. He was one of the colonels who went to discuss them with him. You’ve heard about that, of course?”

“No,” Frade said simply.

“A number of his fellow coronels went to Juan Domingo and asked him, in essence, ‘Juan Domingo, what about this thirteen-year-old girl?’ To which he replied, ‘What’s wrong with that? I’m not superstitious.’”

“Jesus Christ!” Clete said. “Is that true?”

“Unfortunately,” Wattersly said. “I know because I was a member of the delegation.”

“That degenerate sonofabitch!” Inspector General Nervo said bitterly.

“Now,” Wattersly went on, “when furthering the interests of the Germans—protecting the landing site at Samborombón Bay, for example, or shooting up your Casa Chica in Tandil—coincides with what Perón wants, Erich will do it. He is sure God wants him to.

“But, and this is the point of this, he does not want Perón to become president—and will do whatever he thinks is necessary to see that Perón doesn’t.”

“That’s not in the cards, is it?” Frade asked.

“Edmundo hasn’t touched on this, Cletus, so I will,” Inspector General Nervo said.

That’s the first time he’s called me by my first name.

Does that mean he’s starting to like me?

Or just a slip of the tongue?

“What all of us in this room are doing is trying to prevent a civil war,” Nervo said. “None of us wants what happened in Spain to happen here. Brother killed brother. A half-million people died. Her cities lie in ruins. The Communists took the national treasury to Russia to protect it—then kept it. Priests were shot in the street. Nuns raped. Need I go on?”

“No, sir. I’m aware of the horrors of the Spanish Civil War.”

Nervo nodded, then went on: “The reason I looked away when your father—and of course Edmundo—were setting up Operation Blue was that I knew your father would not permit that to happen here. With him in the Casa Rosada and Ramírez as minister of war, there would be no civil war. Nor would Argentina become involved in the war itself. At the time, I thought the war was not Argentina’s business.

“Things changed, of course, when your father was assassinated. I assumed that General Ramírez would step into your father’s shoes and become president. That didn’t happen. Ramírez decided that as minister of war he could keep a tighter grip on things—I’m talking about the armed forces, of course—than he could from the Casa Rosada. He put General Rawson into the Casa Rosada. I now believe that was the right decision.

“What I should have seen and didn’t—Martín did; Wattersly did; others did; I didn’t—was that as it becomes apparent to the German leadership that they have lost the war, they are becoming increasingly desperate. Desperate is the wrong word. Irrational? Insane? Insane. That’s the word.

“I should have seen that when they tried to assassinate you. The first time. Trying to assassinate the son of the man who was about to become president of the nation was insanity! And I certainly should have seen it when they assassinated your father. But I didn’t.

“It was only when el Coronel Martín brought to me proof of Operation Phoenix and then this other unbelievable operation of ransoming Jews out of concentration camps that my eyes were really opened.

“Do they really believe the Americans are going to stand idly by while Hitler and Himmler and the rest of the Nazis—thousands of them—thumb their noses at them from their refuge in neutral Argentina?

“What the Americans would do is sail a half-

dozen battleships up the River Plate and tell us to hand over the bastards. At which point proud and patriotic Argentines would set out to do battle with our pathetic little fleet of old de stroyers! I don’t want the Edificio Libertador taken down by sixteen-inch naval cannon.

“Unfortunately, this is life, not a movie. A bugle is not going to sound and the cavalry will not charge across the pampas to set everything right overnight.

“I would estimate that from sixty to seventy percent of the officer corps of the army think all those stories about concentration camps and the murder of hundreds of thousands of people in them are propaganda in the newspapers, which are all controlled by Jews. They believe it is only a matter of time before the godless Communists are driven back into Russia, and the American and British are driven out of Italy and North Africa by the Germans, who have secret weapons they will unleash on the forces of the Antichrist, if not tomorrow, then next week.”

He stopped.

“Sorry, I got a little carried away.” He passed his whisky glass to La Vallé. “May I have some more of Don Cletus’s scotch, please, La Vallé?”

“You’re doing fine, General,” Clete said.